Personally, I felt that being able to shoot superheated beams of light from your eyes was more useful than being able to tell how old something was. But I figured I would take what I was given.
I left the hut, walking over to the others, who were talking about Australia’s discovery. They looked up as I approached, waiting for me again, like they had before.
Waiting for leadership.
Why look to me? I thought with annoyance. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even want to be in charge.
“Lord Smedry,” Draulin said, “should we wait for your grandfather, or should we go in after him?”
I glanced down at the pouch and was annoyed to find that the strings had unraveled as I was walking. My Talent, acting up again. “I don’t know,” I said.
The others looked at one another. That hadn’t been the response they’d been expecting.
Grandpa Smedry obviously wanted me to lead the group down into the library. But what if I gave the order to go down below, and something went wrong? What if someone got hurt or got captured? Wouldn’t that be my fault?
But what if my father and Grandpa Smedry really needed help?
That’s the problem with being a leader. It’s all about choices—and choices are never very much fun. If someone gives you a candy bar, you’re excited. But if someone offers you two different candy bars and tells you that you can only have one, what then? Whichever one you take, you’ll feel that you missed out on the other one.
And I like candy bars. What about when you have to choose between two terrible things? Did I wait, or lead my group down into danger? That was like having to choose to eat either a tarantula or a bunch of tacks. Neither option is very appealing—both make you sick to your stomach, and both are tough to choke down without catsup.
Personally, I like it much better when someone else does the decision making. That way you have legitimate grounds to whine and complain. I tend to find both whining and complaining quite interesting and amusing, though sometimes—unfortunately—it’s hard to choose which one of the two I want to do.
Sigh. Life can be so tough sometimes.
“I don’t want to make that decision,” I complained. “Why are you all looking at me?”
“You’re the lead Oculator, Lord Smedry,” Draulin said.
“Yeah, but I’ve only known about Oculators for three months!”
“Ah, but you’re a Smedry,” Kaz said.
“Yes, but…” I trailed off. Something was wrong. The others looked at me, but I ignored them, focusing on what I was feeling.
“What’s he doing?” Australia whispered. By now she’d gone back to looking like her old self, though her hair was a bit messy from sleep.
“I don’t know,” Kaz whispered back.
“Do you think that last comment was him swearing?” she whispered. “Hushlanders like to talk about posteriors.…”
He was coming.
I could feel it. Oculators can sense when other Oculators are using Lenses nearby. It’s something built into us, like our ability to activate Lenses.
The sense of wrongness I felt, it was like that of someone activating a Lens. But it was twisted and dark. Frightening.
It meant someone was activating a Lens nearby that had been created in a terrible way. The hunter had found us. I spun, searching out the source of the feeling, causing the others to jump.
There he was. Standing atop a hill a short distance away, one arm too long for his body, staring down at us with his twisted face. All was silent for a moment.
Then he began to run.
Draulin cursed, whipping out her sword.
“No!” I said, sprinting toward the hut. “We’re going in!”
Draulin didn’t question. She just nodded, waving for the others to go first. We dashed across the ground, Kaz pulling out a pair of Warrior’s Lenses and slipping them on. His speed immediately increased, and he was able to keep up with us despite his short legs.
I reached the hut, waving Kaz and Australia inside. Bastille had taken a detour and was in the process of grabbing one of the packs.
“Bastille!” I yelled. “There isn’t time!”
Draulin was backing toward us; she glanced at Bastille, then at the Scrivener’s Bone. He had crossed half the distance to us, and I saw something flash in his hand. A line of whitish blue frost shot from it toward me.
I yelped, ducking into the hut. The structure shook as the burst of cold hit it, and one wall started to freeze.
Bastille skidded in a second later. “Alcatraz,” she said, puffing. “I don’t like this.”
“What?” I asked. “Leaving your mom out there?”
“No, she can care for herself. I mean going down into the library in a rush, without planning.”
Something hit the frozen wall, and it shattered. Bastille cursed and I cried out, falling backward.
Through the opening I could see the hunter dashing toward me. After freezing the wall, he’d thrown a rock to break it.
Draulin burst in through the half-broken door. “Down!” she said, waving her sword toward the stairs, then bringing it back up to block a ray from the Frostbringer’s Lens.
I glanced at Bastille.
“I’ve heard terrible things about this place, Alcatraz,” she said.
“No time for that now,” I decided, scrambling to my feet, heart thumping. I gritted my teeth, then charged down the steps toward the darkness, Bastille and Draulin following close behind.
All went black. It was like I had passed through a gateway beyond which light could not penetrate. I felt a sudden dizziness, and I fell to my knees.
“Bastille?” I called into the darkness.
No response.
“Kaz! Australia! Draulin!”
My voice didn’t even echo back to me.
I’ll take one chocolate bar and a handful of tacks, please. Anyone got any catsup?
Chapter
9
I would like to try an experiment. Get out some paper and write a 0 on it. Then I want you to go down a line and put a 0 there. You see, the 0 is a magic number, as it is—well—0. You can’t get better than that! Now, on the next one, 0 isn’t enough. 7 is the number to put here. Why isn’t the 0 good enough here? 0 is not magical now. Once great, the 0 has been reduced to being nonsense. Now, take your paper and throw it away, then turn this book sideways.
Look closely at the paragraph above this one. (Or, uh, I guess since you turned the book sideways it’s the paragraph beside this one.) Regardless, you might be able to see a face in the numbers in the paragraph—0s form the eyes, the 7 is a nose, and a line of 0s form the mouth. It’s smiling at you because you’re holding your book sideways, and—as everyone knows—that’s not the way to read books. In fact, how are you reading this paragraph anyway? Turn the book around. You look silly.
(For those of you reading the electronic version, please lock your device rotation and adjust your font size up or down until the spacing in the first paragraph of this chapter looks correct on your screen. This is a vital part of the reading experience. I swear.)
There. That’s better. Anyway, I believe I talked in my last book about how first impressions are often wrong. You may have had the impression that I was done talking about first impressions. You were wrong. Imagine that.
There’s so much more to be learned here. It’s not only people’s first impressions that are often wrong. Many of the ideas we have thought and believed for a long time are, in fact, dead wrong. For instance, I believed for years that Librarians were my friends. Some people believe that asparagus tastes good. Others don’t buy this book because they think it won’t be interesting.